Happiness Can Be Found in Your Genes

From the University of Edinburgh's School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Tim Bates and other researchers have determined that the level of happiness that an individual is likely to experience is based to a great extent on their genetical make up.

Bates said that "While it was known that around half the differences in happiness are related to genes, what we found was that those happiness-related genes are genes for personality, namely for being extroverted, emotionally stable and conscientious."

During their research involving 973 pairs of twins, they found that certain genes were responsible for particular types of personality traits an also genes that gave a greater tendency towards happiness.

On the basis of these findings, said Bates, "It turns out that if we want to understand happiness, we will need to understand personality," and that "An important implication is that personality traits of being outgoing, calm and reliable provide a resource, we called it affective reserve, that drives future happiness."

In order to enhance the level of inner well being, the researchers concluded that calm, conscientious and extrovert behaviour patterns would be the best to cultivate as they were the ones that indicated a greater predisposition towards happiness.

"Try and be active and social, even if with just a few people. Practice the things you find emotionally challenging, maybe even keeping a diary to help you keep a sense of reality, and allow you to reflect on which strategies work, and which do not. Then set yourself small achievable goals, and work at them. Count your blessings -- that's reflecting on what works in your life -- keep a sense of humility and work for those things you really want," was the conclusions from Bates.

From the University of California, professor of psychology, Sonja Lyubomirsky said "The results of this study are consistent with previous research on the genetic roots of happiness, which has shown that approximately 50 percent of the variance in individual differences in happiness is determined by genes."